FW: Guys for Girls Redux

[David Colburn]

It's definitely used both ways. "Watch it, dude," and "dude, I'm so happy
for you," can be said to a man or a woman, or "Dude!" can stand alone as an
exclamation of shock or admiration. At least that's true among my crowd
(people in their late 20's/early 30's, many but not all of them California
natives.) But even in the vocative uses, we generally reserve it for
situations where surprise or admiration is also being expressed (I assume
when the friend said, "Dude, you're pregnant," he was expressing surprise
that a pregnant woman would want to smoke a cigarette.)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter A. McGraw" <pmcgraw at LINFIELD.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2003 7:21 PM
Subject: Re: FW: Guys for Girls Redux


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Peter A. McGraw" <pmcgraw at LINFIELD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: FW: Guys for Girls Redux
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
> Something's missing from this discussion so far, though.  The fact that
> "Dude!" is attested elsewhere as an all-purpose interjection doesn't
> preclude that the usage cited in the original post was actually an
> expansion of the vocative use by deletion of the +male feature.  It seems
> to me one would need a recording to be sure, because the intonation
pattern
> would indicate fairly clearly which was meant.
>
> Try saying, "Dude!  You're pregnant!" (= Wow!  Are you ever pregnant!).
> Then try: "Dude, you're pregnant!" (= You, lady, are pregnant.)
> See if your intonation pattern doesn't distinguish the two.
>
> Peter Mc.
>
> --On Tuesday, May 13, 2003 10:52 AM -0700 FRITZ JUENGLING
> <juengling_fritz at SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US> wrote:
>
> > I just told my class this anecdote and asked if 'dude' struck them as
> > being odd.  No one was bothered and they all said it was some
> > interjection.  So, dude has expanded its meaning for them. Fritz
> >
> >>>> laurence.horn at YALE.EDU 05/13/03 09:05AM >>>
> > At 11:38 AM -0400 5/13/03, Frank Abate wrote:
> >> RE what Larry H says (cc'd below) in reply to Katy M:
> >>
> >> I think this _dude_ is a sort of super-vocative, and does not refer to
> >> any person specifically, but is simply a marker of surprise.
> >
> > Sort of like
> > "Boy/Man, are you pregnant!"?
> >
> > L
> >
> >> So in that context
> >> it would be non-gender referential . . . or might we call it generic?
> >>
> >> I have heard my teen and slightly beyond-teen kids and their friends
say
> >> this for years, and it seems an utterance of surprise, not directed to
> >> any person.
> >>
> >> Frank Abate
> >>
> >>
> >> At 10:10 AM -0400 5/13/03, Kathleen E. Miller wrote:
> >>> Hello All,
> >>>
> >>> A few months ago we had a discussion about calling a group of girls,
> >> "guys."
> >>>
> >>> The other day, on our way through a rather seedy part of town (RFK's
> >>> not in the greatest location) a woman came up to the car and asked for
> >>> money, saying she was hungry and pregnant. (She was, obviously so).
She
> >>> then noticed a male friend [mid-30's Maryland native] smoking, and
> >>> changed from asking for money, to asking for a cigarette.
> >>>
> >>> My friend replied, "DUDE, you're pregnant!"
> >>>
> >>> I made a [admittedly cursory] search of the archives and didn't notice
> >>> this being discussed. And I don't know whether if I've behind the
times
> >>> and the entire world knows that it's morphed into non-gender specific
> >>> use, or my friend's the only one to use it that way, but I had never
> >>> heard it in such a context before.
> >>>
> >> Interesting.  I'd bet, like "guys" in the early days, that this is
> >> more likely in the vocative (where the intended reference is easily
> >> recoverable) than in purely referential contexts (#That was one
> >> pregnant dude there!)
> >>
> >> I know there's at least a limited use of "dudette", but perhaps only
> >> jocularly and only in the primed context ("dudes and dudettes").
> >>
> >> Larry
>
>
>
> *****************************************************************
> Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
> ******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************
>